Tasting the Sunlight
by Escape Velocity
Summary: Spike reflects on a life without sunlight


**A/N: I do not own Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and I am not affiliated in any way with it. I am not making any money off this piece of fanfiction.**

**I have used lines from several poems:**

**'Love is like the wild rose brier' by Emily Brontë**

**The Prologue to 'The Canterbury Tales' by Geoffrey Chaucer**

**Sonnet One by William Shakespeare**

**Part of a quote: I will write by sunlight, moonlight, no light by I have absolutely no clue.**

**The rest of the poetry is mine. **

**A Spike point of view piece on tasting sunlight.  **

What does sunlight taste like? I have always asked that. What does it taste like in 1900? In 1965? What does it taste like in 2001?

I don't know. All I know is the flavour of the darkness, rich molasses, sweet blood spreading after a kill. Here it is; New York, the night tastes of hookers and face paint and pretzels. New Orleans was sweeter, intoxicating, weed and LSD and black beauties and the blood of some foolish bint who didn't know better than to trust a man walking the streets at midnight.

I remember the smell of sunlight from before. Fresh linens on the bed each morning, steam from the bath and tea kettle, wild rose brier crawling up my window. 'Love is like the wild rose brier, friendship, like the holly tree'. Mother reading by the sunlight. Elizabeth Ione writing in her journal, her copybook, her poetry book. 'I will write by sunlight, moonlight, no light.' Eyes bright, bright wide-open blue. Always writing, scribble-scribble-scribble.

_'I wonder_

_What does sunlight taste like_

_Heaven in the clouds_

_Oranges and barley_

_Communion wine. '_

But they didn't like her poetry, because they wanted stuff in 'proper' rhyme, because publishing something written by a woman was bad enough, but if it didn't rhyme it was positively atrocious. 

'Love is like the wild rose brier, friendship like the holly tree. The holly is dark…'

Trapped inside my own flesh, I can only dream of the taste of sunlight. My world has been dark so long. Even in the day, hiding in shadow sours the light, makes it rotten and mouldy-sweet in your mouth. 

_'Vanilla and cinnamon_

_And they all come tumbling down_

_Crash-crash-crash_

_Holly and yew_

_Crash-crash-crash_

_Sweet poison.'_

I never understood what Ione was talking about in her poetry. Half the time it was adolescent scribble, depressing and dark. She would write graphically about blood dripping from roses and the smell of burning flesh. She had all the skill in the world, and her writing could have made one hell of a penny dreadful. Yet if someone would say that, she'd smile. 

"I'm too good for that."

Ione. She is the sunlight in my memories; waking up beside her, curled up against me, eyes screwed tight shut against the light that wafted through the robin's egg blue curtains.

"Ione, wake up."

Six years old, beautiful as the china doll father had given her before she died. 

"William, carry me."

I could never resist my sister, whether she was six and asking me to bring her to her room, or sixteen and begging me to help her sneak out of the house to meet boys.

Pink was just fashionable for girls when mum had her room decorated, and it stayed that way. Before, mum had been planning on cream wallpaper with pansy borders, but now the room was coloured pastel pink, with a daisy and rose border. The bedspread was white and pink, and the framed, blurry photograph was framed in white. It was a beautiful, beautiful room.

It had been redecorated by 1956. I went and visited my old home. Don't remember what excuse I gave Dru, or if we had had a fight then and were broken up temporarily, but I know I _went_. 

It was what real estate agents would call 'a charming mid-Victorian villa', all turrets and dark corners and polished wood. I rang the bell and noticed it was electric. The old bell had been disconnected.

"Yes?" the woman looked confused. Couldn't blame her; it was eight p.m., not exactly polite for a social call, specially from a stranger. 

I don't remember what I said; all I know is that I didn't drink from her

"Well, I'm not thinking of selling. My family has had this house for generations…Yes, the first owner of this house was a William Donaldson, as you say. The house passed down to his daughter, however, because his son, William Donaldson the second, died. Here's her old room. Her name was Elizabeth Ione, and she married Herbert Wellsworth of the Yorkshire branch…"

Ione's old room had changed. The heavy bed and desk was still there, but wicker chairs were now scattered through the room. The wallpaper was gone, and I remember running my hands over textured white. 

The room was airy, light. In the day it would have been filled with sunshine and the laughter of little girls. I could taste it; taste happiness and laughter, although sunlight eluded me.

Sunlight has no replacement. I thought I could replace the aching desire for it with Drusilla, my whirling black hole who dragged everything down with her into a strange insanity.

_'I wonder, often in the evening,_

_What is sunlight to someone_

_Who cannot see_

_Or feel_

_Or taste_

_Or hear_

_Are they memories gone sour_

_Little pockets of bittersweet nostalgia_

_And faint, faint beyond_

_The taste of sand and oranges.'_

Dru; sweet and dark, eyes that consumed…The taste of blood and rosemary on her mouth, growing strawberry plants one year and crushing them slowly, one by one

"Mummy's children can see the light, feel it, taste it. Mummy doesn't like it. Come here, little ones. You'll know what it's like to try and subdue the darkness."

Subdue the darkness. That is all I have ever tried to do in my entire life; enslave, control, subdue. My eternal battle with Angel; my power struggle with Dru. I wanted to be its master. The trouble with being in control of darkness is that it eats into you. Gently at first, and it gives you power, and you can keep a handle on it. And one day you wake up and you want to kill off sunlight.

_'I only know the night is dark_

_Because of the moon_

_So bright, shining_

_Silver-white lady, reflections in midnight pools_

_I only know the night is dark_

_Because I have daylight to compare it to_

_If there was no sun, no moon,_

_I would live in darkness quite content_

_Not knowing there's something better.'_

She had so much perception, my sister. Brains and beauty, her take on philosophy was unique, bold, exciting. She was unconventional and brave and yet, reading her book of poems, I can remember the era it was written in so well. _I would live in darkness quite content._

She was right, of course. That's why vampires all want to kill the Slayer. The Slayer is sunlight, sunlight poured and solidified so it fills a human vessel. Kill the Slayer, kill the light, kill the burning ache inside of you. Because you know, as much as vampires enjoy running around and killing the odd person, we all have a self destructive, suicidal streak in us. If I could think of one way to die…

**'in sunlight**

**Useless to put into words**

**Won't even try to make this worth it**

**things worth dying for are never worth**

**Following the rules for.**

**One way of dying**

**Step out**

**Step out**

**Into the light, know it, taste it**

**Feel it in one instant**

**How long does it take to die?**

**Do you know when you're on the point of explosion?**

**yet what's being dust**

**If you can spend it in an eternity of sunlight?'**

I try to capture what it would mean to me, but my poetry is worth less than vamp dust. 

I missed it, the sunlight. Every New Year's, I'd fetch myself a little treat. Remember the first time I did it; thought it would be a good idea. It worked, too. 

"What did the sunlight taste like for this year, love? Come now, tell me, and you might be able to know the flavour of night for the next."

Trembling lips, wary eyes

"My mother died this year." Pause. Hooker's getting no sympathy from the Big Bad. She knows it. "Sunlight tastes of flesh and peaches."

Then the memory of sunlight tainted her blood so I could taste it- not the real thing, of course, but close and sweet enough.

When I asked the first Slayer I killed, her eyes lit up.

"You miss it so much, then? Do you dream about it? Think of it every day? Does it haunt you? Golden and gleaming and pretty, oh so pretty…" She hit me, then, so hard I was senseless and almost staked, but I got over it. I never got to taste _her_ memories, but I remember the feeling once I had banished the light.

Glory. Absolute glory. It was salvation, the knowledge that I had erased some of my desire for light. _Deo gratias!_

A vampire lives from day to day, suffering from a strange torture. I won't say I regretted much; I liked blood and mayhem and drinking blood. Yet I would have given it all up for eternity in the sunlight, even if I was swirling around as graveyard dust. 

_'What you want is what you can't have._

_Crash-crash-crash_

_Sweet poison_

_What does sunlight taste like?_

_Like the memories of that year._

_Peaches plums apples greengages_

_Especially greengages_

_Rosehip jam, damson jelly_

_Regrets._

_Remorse.   
Loss._

_And it all goes tumbling down._

_It's just another year._

_Just another night_

_Just a few more hours without the taste of sunlight.'_

I've got her now, my sunlight. The real deal, sitting before me, golden skin and hair and eyes. I don't think she understands half of what I've been talking about; hell, I'm damned if I know myself.

'And bathed every veyne in swich licour…'

"Am I your sunlight?" Her hands twist awkwardly

"You're everything."

"D-do you want to kill me? See me die?"

"No…"

"But all that…about subduing the dark and killing the Slayer to stop you wanting the light. Does that mean you don't- want it anymore?"

'From fairest creatures we desire increase, that thereby beauty's rose might never die, but as the riper should by time decease, his tender heir might bear his memory…'

The thing about killing the sunlight is just that you end up wanting it more. Hen you're aware you can't have it and then you need it even _more_; a never-ending Tantalus punishment, when in the end you scream out, 'What the _fuck_ have I done to deserve this?'.

And then you meet her. She's your enemy, solidified sunlight, worth more than gold. And you fight, and you try to kill her and one day, you can't. Call it a government chip, or call it fate or call it anything you like. And you end up loving her, and two minutes in her company is enough to taste the sunlight. And you know when you try and explain it all to her that it'll be hell, and it is…

"I can taste the sunlight when I'm with you, Slayer. That's all I've ever wanted."

She moves to sit next to me, eyes grave

"What does sunlight taste like?"

What, indeed? 


End file.
